Biological complexity: protozoa sans mitochondria (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, May 23, 2016, 15:32 (3106 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: No it does not explain the weird animals in the bush. Both the whale and the giraffe require enormous physiologic changes to adapt to those body forms. I don't view them as improvements, but complexifications. There is a wide difference in the two words.
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> dhw: We don't know why the pre-whale took to water or the pre-giraffe to neck-stretching, but that makes no difference to how it was done. .... As regards purpose, your God also said, somewhat cryptically: “I'm complexifying the pre-whale and the pre-giraffe, because my aim is to produce humans.” Mine said, "Just do what you wanner do." Which of those is more likely to lead to the higgledy-piggledy bush?-I wish we had a reasonable story for whales, giraffes and all the other oddball items in the h-p bush. You are certainly correct that complexifying is present. And since the human brain is the most complex thing evolution has produced, it must be the pinnacle and end point, currently, of that process. And you are correct that God might have let the process do 'just do what you wanner do', and then, I assume, dropped in from time to time to help with problems that developed as complexity went too far. No complexification mechanism is in sight in current research. Unless it is found, and epigenetics is a weak possibility, external intervention is a reasonable conclusion.
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> dhw: My point is that your God was willing to set up “a mechanism that can act without his control”. If he gave humans a freedom of choice between right and wrong, he could also have given other organisms the freedom to work out their own ”complexifications”. -Not the same. Our ability of introspection and moralizing is due to consciousness, a result of complexification. Free will/ free choice comes with that. Increasing complexity is built into evolution, so organisms may have a way of increasing it but only humans ended up with a consciousness mimicking God's.
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> dhw: Having a relationship with someone does not mean comparing levels of consciousness. If your God's purpose was to create humans, he must have had a reason. You suggested a relationship with us. You also clearly believe that he is aware of right and wrong: otherwise how could he give us the choice? Once you open the door to human attributes, you can hardly close it if I suggest one (boredom) you don't like. God's boredom, stuck there in eternity with nothing but himself to be conscious of, would certainly be of a magnitude far exceeding ours.-Religions give us reasons for God's activities and relationship to us. I simply say I don't know. Adler said God was responsive to our prayers on a 50/50 level of probability. You try to assign human attributes, i.e., boredom, as a way of exploring your concept of God. Don't try. There is no way of knowing. This is not an area of knowledge that has any degree of exactitude, when we have to work backward from what we see. All religion is guesswork.